The companies don’t care, extracting cheap labor as they churn through their victims is part of the business model.

No. People are poor and a lot of jobs aren't willing to work around a second job. These companies (unsurprisingly) are not upfront about the way you'll be treated. This isn't just these companies: Low-wage jobs commonly misrepresent things like this. Having a right to a job contract (regardless of being 'employee' or 'contractor') would help with this a little - at least it would be upfront, theoretically. Or heck, simply being really strict about labor laws would help, alongside fines/punishments that make skirting labor laws unprofitable.

You would do better scavenging for refundable bottles.

Not in a lot of places. I lived in Indiana. There weren't a lot of places that accepted bottles at all. A few places accepted aluminum cans, but you really needed a large amount. Getting enough for transportation costs was an issue. Realistically, you might have been OK when I was a child in the 80s because you got a deposit: Otherwise, I didn't have refundable bottles available until I moved to Norway in my 30s.

You're also just wrong about how much money you can earn scavenging for refundable bottles - I spent plenty of weekends in my youth doing that.

I knew a woman who was paid to click ads, she earned less than 1 euro a day, on average, but it was better than begging - which seemed like her only viable alternative since her age ruled out prostitution. Factor in the cost of the laptop and internet connection and she was really getting a net negative sum.

She was fortunate though, thanks to previous decent income, she owned an apartment complete with a lodger. Although he was barely earning much more as an online salesman for some kind of ponzi scheme that was, one day, going to make him rich. Last I heard he was owing months in rent since he wasn't even receiving the tiny amounts he was supposedly earning.

In both instances we're talking about reasonably intelligent people who were just caught in this trap of near zero earnings with no opportunity of escape that wouldn't involve a prolonged period of much worse.

"Just set up this home office, it will pay for itself in a month!"

"This one week training, and then you'll be taking calls in no time!"

This and that, and also, sunk cost fallacy is helluva drug, and you don't need to be mathematically illiterate to fall for that.

And looking at an actual posting on Arise, it looks quite legit: https://www.ariseworkfromhome.com/opportunity/remote-custome...

You could expect this on basically any tech job aggregator posting aggregator site or even most companies' own postings. The only big giveaway that something is off about it is the last line:

> *This is not an offer of employment. It is an opportunity to enter into a business-to-business relationship with Arise®.*

If a person is fortunate enough to see that and check the FAQ [0], hopefully they realize how much of a mess this is and that you're basically paying Arise to maybe get paid by someone else, but how you get paid is up to you and might as well be a mystery.

But for those who don't check that and are in desperate need, yeah, I can easily see how Arise at face value looks perfect and desperation goggles hide the flaws:

- Site looks very normal and legit

- The work it discusses is shit call-center work that no one wants to do so there's likely lots of openings for someone who really needs money

- No training needed, you will be trained so a bad job history/no job history isn't a problem

- Criminal records don't seem to matter so if you had issues in the past, it's no big deal

- Work at home so no need to worry about commute/office hours

- The site is "up front" about you needing to pursue opportunities, so that makes it more "honest" and trustworthy

It's a very nice blend of honesty mixed in with the misdirection that likely its enough to get many people to pay the initial fees, maybe for a training or two, and even do a few hours of work for basically free during a high volume period. Arise pays pennies for the work, gets $$$ from the companies for getting the workers, and ropes in tons of cash from the agents. It looks and feels like a normal employment offer to get enough money out of a person to justify the efforts, and then the person is saddled with reality that they don't have a job, they basically paid for the opportunity to pay to get a few $$$ at awful rates.

It's a gross and exploitative company. I think our ire should be focused on that part instead of people who don't realize it's a scam.

[0] - https://www.ariseworkfromhome.com/faq/faqs/